BJP on a jugaadu spree

North, east and south, the ruling party is scouting for and sizing up the weak links in parties to fortify its defences before 2019

Jugaad, that could have etymologically sprung up only from the country’s bumbling yet extraordinarily resourceful Hindi heartland, has become as cool as bindaas and bhelpuri in the urban patois. The tossed salad-like feel that jugaadbrings permeated heartland politics long before the word caught the fancy of Oxford’s lexicographers. Who used their jugaadu skills to juggle numbers and transmute a minority verdict into a majority mandate? The BJP, in Uttar Pradesh in 1997. After Mayawati toppled a coalition government she had formed with the BJP, the BJP’s keensighted strategists spotted and worked on the restive elements in the Congress (that was already tottering in UP) and the BSP (fed up with Behenji and eager to avoid a mid-term assembly poll), wheedled their support, manoeuvred splits and assembled a majority.

As the 2019 election approaches, jugaadbeckons the BJP, especially in UP, where, by its reckoning, it is impossible to keep 73 of the 90 Lok Sabha seats it mopped up in 2014. The jugaadschool of politics essentially entails looking for the kamzor kadi (weak links) in a strong party (and every entity contains one or more spoiler) or a local big cheese who would be adroitly networked with the “panchayats”, commands the votes of a caste or community and has musclemen waiting on hand and foot.

Not for nothing did Prime Minister Narendra Modi approvingly mention Amar Singh in his speech at a Lucknow investors’ meet last July. The former Samajwadi Party MP was yesterday’s news after falling out with young Akhilesh Yadav. Singh had enormous use for Akhilesh’s father Mulayam Singh Yadav in Mulayam’s prime time. Singh has a way of infiltrating any party and getting to the high echelons with an ease that doesn't sit well with more consummate politicians. He built bridges with Sonia Gandhi and Modi for the socially awkward Mulayam.

Singh is trying hard to formally disunite Mulayam’s younger brother, Shivpal Singh Yadav, from the Etawah clan after Shivpal publicly huffed and puffed against Akhilesh. Like the late M Karunanidhi’s second son, MK Alagiri-—widely perceived to be the DMK heir MK Stalin’s adversary—Shivpal has its pockets of following among the Samajwadi cadres. Shivpal’s potential lies in the quantum of votes he can wean away from Akhilesh on the Samajwadi turf. He was not the prime reason for Akhilesh’s disastrous showing in the 2017 assembly elections, but he was a catalyst for the heavy losses the party suffered in the family’s bastions in west-central UP. Shivpal can’t be scoffed at.

However, the axle of the BJP’s ‘jugaad politics’ is Mayawati. Amit Shah’s avowal as a disciple of Chanakya will be put to test by his ability to keep the BSP supremo out of the envisaged Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal coalition, a nearunfailing algorithm that can flip the 2014 result in UP, with or without the Congress, with or without the BJP’s proposition that arithmetic and chemistry are not complementary. The BJP is working hard on the exclude-Mayawati strategy.

In Odisha, that was on top of the BJP’s radar as a sunrise state, its jugaad quest initially led to the door of Baijayant Jay Panda, the Kendrapara MP, who for long, was a close associate of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. It was apparently Patnaik’s hunch that the media savvy Panda had got too cosy with the BJP for comfort that caused him to marginalise, suspend and expel Panda from the BJD. The bashes hosted by Jay and his entrepreneur wife, Jagi Mangat, in Delhi pulled in the socially plugged-in MPs of the BJP and for a while, it seemed that Jay’s entry in the BJP was imminent.

Along came realpolitik as a muffer. Patnaik agreed to support the BJP when it was time to vote an NDA candidate for the Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson’s post against the UPA’s. His gesture tipped the scales for the BJP and was trumpeted as a coup staged by Shah who spoke to him. By every count, it was an accomplishment but Panda’s doorway to the BJP might get blocked if Shah and Patnaik build on the tentative reunion.

Karnataka and its muddled politics is jugaadground for the BJP. Who’s a safer bet, the Congress’s former chief minister Siddaramaiah or his successor, the Congress-backed HD Kumaraswamy? It would almost seem like the BJP is spoilt for choice as Siddaramaiah almost daily declares his intention to get back the CM’s post, while Kumaraswamy tears up. Both are strong caste leaders with their influence in spheres the BJP has been unable to get into. The results of the 2018 assembly election reinforced Kumaraswamy’s standing as the undisputed leader of the powerful Vokkaliga caste in the old Mysuru region, while the data showed that apart from the backward caste Kuruba to which Siddaramaiah belongs, other OBCs and Dalits, too, voted for the Congress. In this patchwork scenario, the BJP believes that Kumaraswamy or Siddaramaiah would be value additions.

However, jugaadpolitics has its limitations. But in a context where the BJP seems increasingly unsure of retaining its 2014 numbers, a bit of street smartness could be a useful option.

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RADHIKA RAMASESHAN Keeps an eagle eye on all that’s hot in the corridors of power

■ In a context where the BJP seems increasingly unsure of retaining its 2014 numbers, a bit of street smartness could be a useful option

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